"Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

Why Millennials Lean Pro-Life

Pro-life demonstrators wait for the Supreme
Court ruling in the “Hobby Lobby” case to be announced June 30, 2014.
(Jonathan Ernst
/Reuters/Newscom)

Millennials lean more pro-life
than the generation preceding them because of advances in medical
technology and science, leaders in conservative media said Friday.

Dana Perino, co-host of Fox News
Channel’s “The Five,” moderated the panel on the relevance of
conservative principles to the millennial generation.

Perino noted a survey by the Associated Press found a 12 percent decline nationwide in abortions since 2010, including in blue states such as New York, Washington, and Oregon.

Americans aged 18 to 29, part of the
millennial generation, also have become more pro-life than their
parents, according to a Gallup poll
cited by Perino. In 2010, it found, 24 percent of millennials agreed
abortion should remain legal in all cases, compared with 36 percent of
those aged 18 to 29 in 1991.Robert Bluey, editor in chief of The
Daily Signal, said the ability for pregnant women to see an ultrasound
of their baby in the womb has helped expand the pro-life movement.

“I’m the father of two children and I
think when you see that ultrasound and you have that experience … that
changes a lot,” Bluey said during a panel discussion at the annual
Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

Bluey said pregnancy centers
strategically located across from Planned Parenthood or other abortion
clinics have allowed women to discuss what potentially could be a
“challenging situation” and consider options.

Katie Pavlich, editor of Townhall.com
and a Fox News contributor, appeared on the panel with Bluey and Benny
Johnson, creative director at the Independent Journal Review.

“I’m excited that the millennial
generation is pro-life,” Pavlich said. “I think that science has been on
our side for a long time on this issue.”

She said the anger from abortion
activists after Doritos aired its “ultrasound” commercial during the
Super Bowl illustrates how “extreme” the pro-choice movement is.

The ad shows a mother getting an
ultrasound while her baby kicks in her womb, supposedly trying to get
closer to the expectant, oblivious father who is munching on chips.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, a group
that advocates abortion rights, immediately tweeted its opposition to
Doritos for “humanizing fetuses.”

She also called on men to join the
pro-life movement, pushing back on Johnson for refusing to comment
because he is “not a woman.”

“Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean you can’t comment on the issue.”

THE BELOW OPINION BY BILL VAN AUKEN IS BY THE COMMUNIST FRONT WSWSorg. THIS IS AN ANTI-AMERICAYN PARTY THAT BELIEVES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOULD PAY FOR MEXICO'S CORRUPTION AND FAILURE TO HELP THEIR OWN PEOPLE BEYOND SHIPPING THE MEXICANS OVER THE BORDER TO LOOT AMERICA!

WHAT WE WILL NEVER HEAR FROM THE WSWS COMMUNIST FRONT ARE THE FACTS ON MEXICO'S HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!!!

ILLEGALS IN MEXICO WILL NOT GET JOBS, 18 YEARS OF ANCHOR BABY WELFARE, "FREE" MEDICAL, EDUCATION OR ANYTHING ELSE BUT A KICK IN THE HEAD AND RAPID DEPORTATION!!! EVEN AS THE NARCOMEX LEADERSHIP ENDLESSLY RANTS ON WHAT THEY THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OWE THE MEX FLAG WAVERS! AND LOOT THEY DO!!!!

Peña Nieto joins Mexican ex-presidents in denouncing Trump

By
Bill Van Auken
8 March 2016

BLOG: THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. MEXICANS ARE A CRIME TIDAL WAVE.

Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, issued a statement Monday
denouncing Donald Trump, breaking silence studiously observed by his
government for the past nine months, since the Republican presidential
front-runner launched his campaign with a speech characterizing Mexican
immigrants as criminals and “rapists.”

BLOG: UNFORTUNATELY THERE ARE ACUTALLY 40 MILLION MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS LOOTING IN OUR OPEN BORDERS!

Peña Nieto’s fairly mild condemnation of Trump, who has made the
sealing of the US-Mexican border with a 1,000-mile wall—paid for by
Mexico—and the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants central
themes of his campaign, was contained in an interview published by the
Mexican daily Universal.

In the same interview, the president defended his drive to privatize
the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, and asserted that no one could “even
attempt to blame the federal government” for the September 2014
disappearance of the 43 normalistas, students from the
Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the state of Guerrero. This
despite documented reports of army involvement in the mass kidnapping
and murder of the students and subsequent evidence of a deliberate
government cover-up.
Trump’s rhetoric, the Mexican president said, “hurt a relationship
that Mexico has sought with the United States of bridges, of dialogue,
of rapprochement, of seeking solutions to shared problems through
agreements and shared tasks.”

He went on to compare the Republican candidate to fascist dictators
of the 1930s: “There have been episodes in the history of humanity where
this type of rhetoric has lead to ominous scenarios,” he said.
“Mussolini and Hitler entered the political scene in the same way; they
took advantage of a context—for example an economic crisis. And what
they planted created a historical conflagration.”
Nonetheless, Peña Nieto stressed that he was not worried about Trump
being elected and that his government would “seek the path of mutual
respect” in order to “really build a better relationship” with whoever
wins the US presidential election in November.

The remarks made by Peña Nieto, of the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), came in the wake of a widely publicized
interview in which former Mexican president Vicente Fox, of the
right-wing PAN (National Action Party), told Spanish language network
Univision’s anchor Jorge Ramos: “I’m not gonna pay for that f---ing
wall. He should pay for it. He’s got the money.”
Fox, a wealthy businessman whose election in 2000 ended 75 years of PRI rule, also called Trump “racist” and “crazy.”

Incredibly, Fox’s statement drew a condemnation from Trump for the
former Mexican president’s use of an obscenity, saying he “should be
ashamed and apologize.” This from a candidate who epitomizes the
degraded character of the US election campaign, itself an expression of
the protracted descent into criminality and parasitism of America’s
ruling oligarchy.

Fox’s successor and fellow PAN politician, Felipe Calderón, similarly
told CNBC last month: “Mexican people...are not going to pay a single
cent for such a stupid wall. And it’s going to be completely useless.”
He pointed out that the flow of Mexican immigrants returning to Mexico
now outstripped the number of Mexicans entering the US.

“They don’t want to go,” he said, “they can work for a motor company
[that’s] not in Detroit, I am sorry to say. They are working for a motor
company in Hermosillo and Toluca, so Mazda is coming to Mexico, Honda
is coming to Mexico. Those kids have jobs in that industry in Mexico.”

Popular reaction within Mexico to the denunciation of Trump by the
three Mexican presidents has been summed up in the Mexican expression, “Un burro hablando de orejas” or “a donkey talking about ears”—roughly the equivalent of the English phrase, “the pot calling the kettle black.”

Fox and Calderón presided over governments that sought to subordinate
Mexico ever more directly to the domination of US imperialism. Economic
stagnation and deepening poverty under Fox led to an increased flow of
Mexican immigrants seeking work in the US. Calderón’s reign is
synonymous with the escalation of the so-called war on drugs and the
implementation of the Mérida Initiative, or Plan Mérida. This brought
with it unprecedented operations by US military and intelligence
personnel on Mexican soil and a US-funded build-up of the Mexican
security forces. Its result was the deaths of more than 80,000 Mexicans
under Calderón.

This murderous toll has doubled under their PRI successor, Peña
Nieto, whose administration has escalated the attacks on the working
class and the subordination of Mexico to the interests of foreign
capital. The hallmark of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” is the drive to
privatize PEMEX and open up Mexican oil fields to exploration and
exploitation by the major transnational oil conglomerates.
Like his predecessors, Peña Nieto has collaborated closely with
Washington against immigrants, even as the Obama administration has
carried out a record number of deportations. Washington and the Mexican
government are carrying out a joint policy to suppress the flow of
Central American refugees fleeing the intense violence bred by decades
of US interventions in the region.

The opposition to Trump by these reactionary Mexican capitalist
politicians is based not on a defense of the Mexican people or
immigrants in the US, but rather on the interests of foreign capital and
Mexico’s ruling oligarchy, the top 1 percent whose wealth is roughly
equivalent to that of the bottom 50 percent of Mexican society, more
than 60 million people.

Francisco Guzmán, chief of staff to President Peña Nieto, who is
taking a leading role in a bid to “counteract misinformation” from the
Trump campaign,stressed recently: “This [relationship] is not a threat
but an opportunity. … The North American region is the most competitive
in the world. That [relationship] is much more intelligent than a wall,
which, far from boosting trade, will restrict it.”
The Mexican ruling class is offering its services in making US
transnationals “the most competitive” by ensuring, in collaboration with
the corporatist Mexican trade unions, that workers in the maquiladora
plants on the border and in the auto parts and assembly plants remain
super-exploited and poorly paid. The country’s daily minimum wage, just
over $4, is among the lowest in the hemisphere.

The emergence as a leading US presidential candidate of a fascistic
figure like Trump, appealing to racist and anti-immigrant sentiments and
promoting reactionary economic nationalism, represents a serious
warning to the working class on both sides of the US-Mexican border.

This danger, which is rooted in the deep-going crisis of US and world
capitalism, cannot be answered by either appeals to Mexican nationalism
or pleas by the Mexican bourgeoisie for continued economic integration.
It requires the unification of the working class in US and Mexico in a
common struggle to put an end to capitalism.

TIME TO END MEXICO'S LOOTING?"As alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse.
It's the reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation, the
"Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the
"Wire Act" for short."

"My bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who
wire money to another country but cannot prove that they are in the
United States legally. The fee would be used to enhance border security.
Basically, we would be able to dramatically improve border security
while making illegal immigrants pay for it."

"We also have evidence that many of those illegals who are remitting
money are more likely to be illegal immigrant households receiving
Social Security, health care benefits, unemployment insurance and/or
stimulus money. Is it really fair for those individuals to live off our
tax dollars but send untaxed, under-the-table money abroad?"

ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE.ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES.THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM.NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION! BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS

ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND

ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2

BILLION PER YEAR!There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize illegal
immigrants' health care and education. There's the revenue we lose out
on when illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of earnings that
illegal immigrants wire out of the United States with no tax or penalty.

Kevin writes that it’s a mystery to him “that conservatives are so
miserable at the moment, when they are presented with such a desirable
choice” between Cruz and Rubio. Let me explain.

There’s no doubt that both “are self-conscious conservatives in the
sense that they are products of the conservative movement,” as Kevin
says, “in a way that no president has been since Ronald Reagan.” I’ll
even concede that Rubio got into bed with Schumer because he was
auditioning for the job of Republican We Can Do Business With, a
deal-maker who can get things done, and a deal on immigration seemed
like a good place to start.

But there are two factors that might help resolve Kevin’s mystery.
First, as I argue on the homepage today, immigration is not just another
issue. It impacts every aspect of policy, and is irreversible. Angela
Merkel’s conservative bona fides are irrelevant next to the damage she
has done to her country. If Rubio were to change his tune on immigration
after winning the election (as he’s done after winning every previous
election), nothing else he did would matter.

And the chances of that happening are greater than Kevin thinks. He
writes that, “our hypothetical President Rubio is never going to sign
that amnesty bill because Congress isn’t ever going to send it to him.”
He could be right – If Rubio wins, I certainly hope that’s the way it
would play out. But the House has different leadership than in 2013.
While John Boehner was basically in favor of a Gang of Eight-style
policy of amnesty for illegals and massive expansion of legal
immigration, he wasn’t an ideologically committed supporter of unlimited
immigration like Paul Ryan. Remember, in 2013-2014, Ryan worked with
Luis Gutierrez to pass a version of the Senate bill, just as Rubio had
worked with Schumer. With Ryan as Speaker and Rubio in the White House,
the odds that they’d try again are greater than we should be comfortable
with, especially when the anti-borders interests would take a Rubio
victory as proof that you can push amnesty and increased immigration and
live to tell about it.

This notion that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true.

Eagle Forum has published a memo detailing Marco Rubio’s lies to
conservatives in his effort to get Chuck Schumer’s immigration bill
passed. “Lies” is a strong word, but it’s the only word that fits. This
wasn’t the natural trimming of politicians, like Rubio’s justification
of sugar subsidies in the service of his financial patrons the Fanjul
brothers. From Cicero to Reagan, all successful politicians engage in
misdirection or exploit ambiguity (including all the other current
Republican hopefuls). In this case, though, Rubio led a Clintonian
campaign of calculated falsehoods designed to sell Schumer’s Gang of
Eight bill to conservatives.

Those falsehoods are too numerous to list in a blog post – read the
whole paper. But some examples regarding just one part of the bill: As
Rubio himself was forced to admit eventually, Schumer’s bill granted
work permits and Social Security numbers to illegals up front, and
promised the enforcement targets would be met in future years – just
like the failed 1986 amnesty. And yet, here’s what he told conservative
media:

To Limbaugh: “if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that
nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in
place, I won’t support it.”

To Hannity: “I don’t think any of that [amnesty] begins until we certify
that the border security progress has been real. That a workplace
enforcement mechanism is in place. That we are tracking visitors to our
country, especially when they exit.”

Bill O’Reilly said: “Senator Rubio told me on the phone today that it
would be at least 13 years, 13, before people in the country illegally
right now could gain full legal working status and even longer to
achieve citizenship.”

Rubio also lied about the size of the bill’s unprecedented increase in
legal immigration, he lied about the scope of waivers, he lied about
welfare eligibility, he lied to law enforcement about amnesty for gang
members.

Disagreement over policy is one thing; Jeb’s immigration views, for
instance, are not shared by most of the people whose votes he’s seeking,
but he’s honorably forthright about what he believes. Rubio, on the
other hand, tried to trick his own partisans. I had actually forgotten
the scope of his dishonesty in pushing Schumer’s bill; Eagle Forum has
done a service by collecting it all in one place. And Rubio has never
apologized for it. Maybe someone will bring it up at tonight’s debate.

Immigration isn’t just another issue. Despite his “does not compute”
glitch Saturday night (which will likely dog him for the rest of his
career, like Rick Perry’s “oops” and Dan Quayle’s “you’re no Jack
Kennedy” moment), Marco Rubio is still a live contender for the
nomination. So it remains important to explain why I think his
immigration record disqualifies him from being the 2016 nominee.

Many conservatives who admire Rubio’s genuine political talent agree
that his shilling for Chuck Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill was bad. But
they offer two reasons that this should not be an impediment to his
being the Republican presidential nominee. First, they say, Rubio has
learned his lesson and, second, he’s quite solid on many other issues.
Both parts of this defense warrant examination: Has Rubio truly changed
his spots on immigration? And is immigration simply one issue among
many, so that Rubio’s deviation there is outweighed by his fidelity on
others?

As to the first question: There’s every reason to suspect Rubio is
merely an election-year immigration hawk. A devastating 14-page
indictment of Rubio’s immigration record, prepared by Eagle Forum (html
and pdf), lays out his duplicity in painful detail. Early in his career,
anti-borders groups were delighted with Rubio’s conduct in the Florida
legislature; the head of one of them, NALEO, said, “He, as speaker, kept
many of those [immigration-control bills] from coming up to a vote. We
were very proud of his work as speaker of the House.”

Then, when Rubio ran for the Senate, he turned into a hawk. As CNN’s
greatest-hits clip at last month’s debate showed, Rubio said the
following, among other things, during his 2010 campaign: “Earned path to
citizenship is basically code for amnesty, it’s what they call it. . . .
It is unfair to people who have legally entered this country to create
an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and
knowingly did so.” This hawkishness on immigration was an important
reason for his upset victory over Charlie Crist.

“Once he got elected, he betrayed us all,” according to Phyllis
Schlafly, Rubio’s first major outside endorser in the Senate primary.
Rubio chose to become the chief salesman and public face of Chuck
Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill and, as the Eagle Forum indictment shows,
his mendacity went well beyond embracing the amnesty he’d so recently
denounced: It included a calculated effort to dupe conservatives about
what was really in the bill. It was so bad that the head of the ICE
agents’ association said that “he directly misled law-enforcement
officers” at a meeting right before the bill was introduced in the
Senate.

Then, when the voters rebelled at Senate passage of his monstrous bill
and the House refused to pass it, Rubio denounced his own bill, saying
the public doesn’t trust Washington to follow through on its enforcement
promises. (Of course, this was apparent to anyone with eyes to see and
ears to hear, not just in 2013 but even in 2007, when Bush’s amnesty
push failed.)

To sum up: Rubio was anti-enforcement in the Florida legislature, then
an enforcement hawk at election time in 2010, then Schumer’s cabana boy
in 2013, then a hawk again at election time. Anyone can flip once —
people really do change their minds, or even see political writing on
the wall and embrace a new position. But flipping and flopping in time
with the election cycle should be cause for skepticism, to say the
least.

And Rubio hasn’t even really renounced Schumer’s bill. He still supports
all the parts of it, but thinks they should be passed separately rather
than in a comprehensive package. And he is still an enthusiastic
supporter of the most important piece of the Schumer-Rubio legislation —
its doubling of legal immigration, from 1 million a year to 2 million,
which, combined with the amnesty, would have resulted in the issuance of
30 million green cards in the first decade after passage.

Not only has Rubio not recanted his support for doubling immigration,
he’s actually sponsored a bill in this Congress to triple H-1B
admissions of foreign workers (the I-Squared Act — which Michelle Malkin
has cheekily labeled Rubio’s second-worst immigration bill). What’s
more, personnel is policy, and Rubio’s inner circle — pollster Whit
Ayres, for instance, and Cesar Conda, his chief of staff during the
Schumer romance and likely White House chief of staff — are confirmed
opponents of immigration limits. The idea that the open-borders
corporate culture of the Rubio operation would be trumped by some
enforcement promises made on the campaign trail is a fantasy.

But even supposing all this is true, Rubio is sound on many other issues
— his answer on the abortion issue Saturday night, for instance, was
very strong and, while he’s a little too interventionist for my taste,
he’s firmly in the GOP mainstream and probably more knowledgeable on
foreign policy than his rivals. Since no candidate is perfect, isn’t
focusing so intently on immigration an unrealistic demand for purity?
After all, Rubio’s opportunistic embrace of sugar subsidies, at the
behest of a major donor, is the kind of soiled compromise we often
accept.

But immigration isn’t just another issue, like farm subsidies or taxes
or even battling radical Islam. Immigration is a meta issue, one that
affects almost every arena of national life — from politics to education
to jobs to security to health care to national cohesion. If we set
taxes too high, we can lower them later. If we let the Navy get too
small, we build more ships. But if we get immigration wrong, we can’t
undo it: People are not widgets, and we can’t ask for a do-over after
adding 30 million green cards in a decade.

What’s more, the deep gulf in views over immigration between elites and
the public, between globalists and patriots, has given immigration a
symbolic importance as a marker of legitimacy. As Ramesh Ponnuru has
written, “A hard line on immigration, however it is defined, is now part
of the conservative creed.”

In effect, Rubio is an Angela Merkel Republican — genuinely conservative
on most every issue, except the one that counts above all others.

For this reason alone, he should be denied the nomination. If he were to
succeed in getting it, the donor class and its politicians would take
away the lesson that they can betray the voters all they want on this
potentially nation-breaking issue, and simply talk their way out of it.
Voltaire wrote, in Candide, that “it is good to kill an admiral from
time to time, in order to encourage the others.” Rubio’s betrayal
doesn’t warrant the gallows, but he must be denied this prize, “in order
to encourage the others.”

This doesn’t mean he’s finished in politics. He’s a young man with
immense political gifts and has plenty of time before 2020 or 2024 to
atone in Congress for his transgressions and earn back the people’s
trust. If he were to run for governor of Florida, for instance, he could
amass a record of fidelity to immigration law by, say, passing
mandatory E-Verify for his state. Even before then, during the remainder
of his Senate term, he could work with Jeff Sessions to introduce
legislation to end chain migration and abolish the Visa Lottery — or, at
the very least, withdraw his sponsorship of the anti–American-worker
I-Squared H-1B bill.

If Marco Rubio can convincingly turn away from his Merkelian past, he
can have a bright future, perhaps even become the 46th or 47th president
of the United States. But to nominate him in 2016 would be a profound
mistake.

4.Where Does United States v. Texas Stand after Scalia's Death?
By Jon Feere
CIS Immigration Blog, February 14, 2016
. . .
If United States v. Texas results a 4-4 split decision, it
means that the lower court holding stands and President Obama's
unilateral amnesty remains enjoined. Critical to this analysis, any
opinion issued by the Supreme Court would not be precedent-setting.
(It would also likely be quite short. For example, in a 4-4 case from
2010, the Court simply wrote: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally
divided Court.")

What is unique in this situation is that the lower court's holding is in
the injunction phase – a full trial on the merits of DAPA and the
states' interests has not been held. This means that if the Supreme
Court were to split evenly, a hearing on the merits of the case is still
likely to be held at some point in the future by the lower court. At
some point after that, it is possible that the case would get appealed
back up to the Supreme Court. This would presumably happen after a new
justice has been appointed and after a new president has been elected.

What's interesting about this is that if the Obama administration hadn't
pressured the Court to take up the case, it could have slipped to the
next term and perhaps the immigration case would not be on everyone's
radar to the extent that it is now, making it easier for the president
to persuade Congress to allow him to appoint a new justice later this
year. It would be much more preferable from the administration's
perspective to appoint a new justice before the immigration case is
decided.
. . .http://www.cis.org/feere/where-does-united-states-v-texas-stand-after-scalias-death

5.Criminal Alien Assistance Funds: Wanting Your Cake and Eating It Too
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
But one can understand congressional interest in creating favor with
politically savvy and powerful law enforcement officials throughout the
country, such as county sheriffs and major city police chiefs, by
establishing an atmosphere of good will and cooperation between law
enforcement agencies nationwide and federal immigration agents charged
with finding and removing alien criminals.

The problem is that recalcitrant state legislatures and city and county
councils have erected barriers to such cooperation. Likewise, many
sheriffs and police chiefs have adopted rules that render the jobs of
federal agents much more difficult by refusing to honor immigration
detainers and declining to notify agents of arrests or the release dates
of aliens. This "sanctuary city" movement (which includes counties and
states along with cities), having gone unchecked by the administration,
has experienced mushroom-like growth — especially since the
administration itself has unilaterally created policy barriers by
narrowly defining when agents may even file such detainers. Not to
mention the litigiousness of open-borders groups that have sued state
and local law enforcement organizations for honoring the detainers
(suits which, as often as not, the federal government has run from,
leaving their enforcement "partners" to fend for themselves).

Still, there is something unconscionable about holding out one hand for
federal money and using the other to stiff-arm federal immigration
agents trying to do their job. Such is the case with California, which
even as it receives tens of millions of dollars in SCAAP money, has
enacted into law the "Trust Act", a statute prohibiting both state and
local California agencies from fully cooperating with immigration agents
or honoring detainers. This has on more than one occasion led to
unnecessary deaths (see here, here, and here). Yet, amusingly, a
California spokesman is quoted as lamenting the potential loss of money
because of the serious impact it will have on his state, and talking
about the number of alien inmates with detainers filed against them. One
wonders how many would, in the end, actually be honored, and how many
were rejected out of hand in the first place.
. . .http://www.cis.org/cadman/criminal-alien-assistance-funds-wanting-your-cake-and-eating-it-too

6."We Might as Well Abolish Our Immigration Laws"
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
I mentioned two ways in which this ultimate dismantling might come
about. One involved stacking the deck of key appointments, such as
enlarging the bench of immigration judges with individuals who share the
president's open borders outlook. That has been happening in earnest,
and as one can see from a cursory glance at the official website of the
Executive Office for Immigration Review, it includes not just
rank-and-file judges, but also a slew of six new assistant chief
immigration judges who will ride herd over the others. Can anyone doubt
their philosophical proclivities?

The other way involves continuing to mandate executive actions that
crush even the semblance of immigration law enforcement. This most
recent directive to the Border Patrol certainly meets that test. And it
is not the only one. The administration has also directed that aerial
surveillance of our borders be cut in half. This is incredible at a time
when ISIS terrorists have threatened to infiltrate the United States by
any means necessary. One suspects that they care little about that
fight, though, since they have shown no will for it to date, and since
it will become the inheritance of the next president. It takes little
imagination to gauge that the reasons for the cut are twofold: First, to
permit the flooding of our borders with citizens from our southern
neighbors in a way that they believe, or at least hope, will force the
issue of a future broad-based amnesty. Second, and more prosaically, to
minimize the possibility that there will be a leak of aerial
surveillance videos that reveal exactly how damaging the new rules of
engagement for Patrol Agents are by showing footage of large numbers of
aliens crossing the border with impunity and indifference to the
possibility of apprehension.
. . .http://www.cis.org/cadman/we-might-well-abolish-our-immigration-laws

7.DHS OIG Issues a "No Recommendation" Audit Report — Or Does it?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
As one can easily see, the left column, highlighted in blue, says, "What
We Recommend: We made one recommendation to CBP to develop and
implement a process to determine program costs for the SOG."

The text immediately to the right of the blue says, "We made no
recommendation regarding the lack of formal performance measures in the
SOG program [but that] CBP concurred with our recommendation. The
recommendation is resolved and open."

8.A Look at the New Center for Migration Studies Illegal Population Estimates
By Steven A. Camarota
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
One of the biggest problems with the CMS report is the way the findings
are presented. The headline and the accompanying article emphasize a
"continued" decline in the illegal population. But this conclusion is
not supported by data they present. The illegal estimates from CMS are
based on the public-use file of the American Community Survey, and like
any survey it has a margin of error. Although CMS does not provide it,
for a population of 10.9 million illegal immigrants drawn from the
public-use file of the ACS, the margin of error must be a little over
100,000. We can estimate the margin of error for the illegal population
by using the total foreign-born Mexican population in the 2014 ACS as a
proxy population. In 2014 the ACS showed 11.7 million Mexican
immigrants, with a margin of error of ±110,000. If we simply use the
same procedure for calculating the margin of error for an illegal
population of 10.9 million, the margin of error would be ±106,000 for
2014. This assumes a 90 percent confidence level. If we assume a 95
percent confidence level the margin of error is +/- 127,000. The illegal
population is very similar in characteristics to the overall Mexican
immigrant population so the confidence interval would have to be nearly
identical.
. . .http://www.cis.org/camarota/center-migration-studies-report-falls-short

9.The House Presents a Sprightly Hearing on EB-5
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016

The full House Judiciary Committee produced a lively and often
stimulating hearing on the immigrant investor (EB-5) program yesterday.
. . .
TApparently the government has had, for 25 years, the power to raise the
minimum investment, but never used it, even as inflation climbed.

Colucci said that the administration was thinking about it.

Several people said that the half-million/one-million differential was
supposed to channel funds into depressed rural and urban areas, but that
EB-5 promoters had through gerrymandering managed to distort the
program into its current shape. Then in one of those moments we
sometimes see in these hearings, witness Calderon pointed out something
that had been forgotten for decades.

She said that "in footnote six of my paper there is a reference to a
third level of investment in the 1990 act, and it calls for a minimum
stake of $3 million" for an investment in a really prosperous area. She
was arguing for a sliding scale of investment to help depressed areas.

At about this point, witness Gordon said, in response to a question
about how to break the strangle-hold of affluent urban areas, that a new
and vigorous use of differential rewards (with higher ones for
investments in poor areas) could change the current patterns, but only
if the government made that a priority.

Calderon had another interesting observation. There are something like
63,000 visas backlogged in the program because there are more
applications on hand than can be filled within the annual ceiling of
10,000. The backlog has been worsened due to the fact that there usually
are about 2.5 visas per investment, and also by the heavy use (87
percent) of the program by Chinese nationals. The Chinese usage has
bumped into another provision of the law setting overall migration
ceilings on aliens from individual nations.

10.Strategic Objective Is Questionable, but Tactics Are Attractive
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 11, 2016
. . .
Yesterday's Immigration Daily featured a brief article by "Dino
Palangic et. al." to which is attached an Excel spreadsheet that
enables immigration attorneys use eye-catching graphics to support their
petitions for either nonimmigrant treaty investors (E-2) or immigrant
investors (EB-5).

11.What Money Can and Can't Buy in Our Immigration System
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016
. . .
E visas are nonimmigrant ones and do not, in and of themselves, lead to a green card.

As an aside, my caller said that one of the reasons why there are so
many small Korean retail establishments is that a migrant with $100,000
to $200,000 can buy a retail establishment and thus qualify for an E-2
visa. This is another way to buy your way into the country, but not
permanently.

12.Most of the Gains from Immigration Go to Immigrants Themselves – Not to Natives
By Jason Richwine
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a reasonably balanced
look at the economic effects of Arizona's crackdown on illegal
immigrants. The state has enjoyed a 40 percent decline in its illegal
population since it mandated E-Verify and empowered local police to
check immigration status during traffic stops. (Because Arizona's
decline is larger than in surrounding states, we may plausibly attribute
it to the new policies.) The Journal points out that fewer illegal
immigrants has meant less overall economic output for Arizona, but also
higher wages in some sectors and less of a financial strain on schools
and hospitals.

Sorting through these different effects can be tricky, and it tripped up
even Kevin Drum, a sharp-minded liberal blogger for Mother Jones.
Reacting to the Journal piece, Drum noted that Arizona's annual GDP is
$6 billion lower because of the new policies, whereas schools and
hospitals are saving only $410 million. "Arizona is paying a high price
for cracking down on illegal immigration," Drum concluded.

13.The Ideological Divide on Immigration: Prevention vs. Protection
By Jerry Kammer
CIS Immigration Blog, February 7, 2016
. . .
South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, the immigration subcommittee
chairman, charged the Obama administration with failure to manage the
crisis. He pointed to reports that migrants had told Border Patrol
agents they came north because they had heard that if they made it
across the border they would be allowed to stay in the country.

"In other words, no adequate steps have been taken to halt the surge or
discourage aliens from attempting to enter the United States," Gowdy
said. "We must at some point send a clear message to potential unlawful
immigrants" that they will not be allowed to stay in the United States.

In response to Gowdy's call for tough-minded resolve, Michigan Democrat
John Conyers called for big-hearted compassion. Said Conyers: "People
need to live free from an endless cycle of violence and persecution. ...
We must address the root causes of the hemisphere crisis. ... We have a
moral as well as a legal obligation to provide asylum seekers the
opportunity to apply for humanitarian protection."

Thirty years ago Democrats and Republicans managed to bridge the much
narrower ideological divide of that era. Congress passed and President
Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, calling it a
solution to illegal immigration. IRCA was built on a hard-won compromise
that promised to combine protection in the form of amnesty with
prevention in the form of worksite enforcement.
. . .http://www.cis.org/kammer/ideological-divide-prevention-vs-protection

14.Attention Syrian Refugees: U.S. Is Looking into Your Facebook Accounts
By Nayla Rush
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
Based on the following excerpts from the witness statements, here's the
deal. The U.S. government is going to hire more people, spend more
money, deploy more resources to vet more and more immigrants, asylum
seekers, and refugees (unaccompanied minors from Central America have
just been added to the list of people we "need" to bring in). And this,
despite the fact that the system is already backlogged, staff is
overwhelmed, and the budget is tight. As usual, it is the American
citizen and the legal immigrant who will pick up the tab in order to
keep up with this administration's overseas humanitarian enthusiasms.
. . .http://www.cis.org/rush/attention-syrian-refugees-us-looking-your-facebook-accounts

Last night, the Democratic debate in Milwaukee became the latest example
of the ill-informed immigration narrative propagated in the United
States and the lack of interest in enforcement of immigration law.

During the debate Sen. Bernie Sanders went after Hillary Clinton's vague
support for deporting some Central Americans, claiming she was willing
to deport "people who were fleeing drug violence and cartel violence,"
making an explicit reference to Honduras. Yet, violence is not the
principal reason Honduran are choosing to migrate.
. . .http://www.cis.org/luna/democrats-get-immigration-issue-wrong-again

16.Survey Shows Main Cause of Honduran Emigration Is Economics, Not Violence
By Kausha Luna
CIS Immigration Blog, February 9, 2016
. . .
Regarding migration, the survey confirmed the economic crisis in
Honduras as the main cause for migration. Of the respondents that had a
family member who had migrated in the last four years, 77.6 percent did
so due to lack of employment and a search for better opportunities.
Meanwhile, 16.9 percent migrated due to violence and insecurity. In
comparison, the 2014 ERIC-SJ survey showed that 82.5 percent migrated
for the former causes and 11 percent migrated for the latter. So while
violence and insecurity have grown in importance among causes for
migration, they continue to lag far behind economic factors as the
primary cause.

Homicide rates in Honduras have been decreasing since 2012.

However, the Obama administration's narrative insists that Central
Americans are fleeing violence and as such should be welcomed into the
United States with open arms as "refugees." This narrative ignores the
economy as the primary push factor for migration, as well as the pull of
incentives created by the Obama administration in its refusal to
enforce immigration laws.
. . .Return to Top

********
********

17.The Next Administration's Immigration Crisis
By Michael Cutler
FrontPagMag.com, February 8, 2016
. . .
While the politicians downplay the actual number of likely illegal
aliens they also never mention that if legalized, millions of illegal
aliens would have the right to immediately bring in their spouses and
minor children. Think of how many millions of additional aliens would
suddenly be admitted into the United States with lawful status- flooding
our educational and healthcare systems.

18.How to Fix Illegal Immigration in Five Steps Without Building a Wall
But we should build some walls too
By Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online, February 9, 2016
. . .
No, not the question of immigration — illegal immigration.
There’s a temptation to bundle those together, because we have problems
with our legal immigration regime, too, but the more tightly we tie them
together, the more closely we bind ourselves to “solutions” that
aren’t. With illegal immigration, we won’t get 100 percent of the way
there with five reforms, but we might get 92 percent of the way there.

One: Enact a law that does one thing: prohibit people
who have entered the United States illegally from applying for
citizenship — even if their current status is legal. If you ever have
entered the United States illegally, you don’t ever become a citizen.

Two: Enact a law that does one thing: prohibit people
who have entered the United States illegally from applying for a work
permit — even if their current status is legal. If you ever have entered
the United Sates illegally, you don’t ever get a work permit.

That’s your firewall against amnesty. Vote against those laws, and
you’re voting for amnesty; vote to repeal them down the line, you’re
voting for amnesty. This creates good political incentives in Washington
and removes bad incentives among those who come here illegally
expecting that their status eventually will be made legal.
. . .http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431012/fixing-illegal-immigration-five-steps

19.U.S. Election Comm. Quietly Lets States Verify U.S. Citizenship
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, February 12, 2016
. . .
Nevertheless, election officials in some states have confirmed that
requiring ID is not enough to prevent fraud. American citizenship,
mandatory to vote in U.S. elections at every level, must also be
verified. But first states must get approval from the feds, specifically
the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The bipartisan
commission is tasked with assuring that elections are administered in
accordance with federal laws. This includes accrediting voting system
test labs, certifying voting equipment and keeping a national mail voter
registration form.

For years the EAC has rejected requests from several states to allow the
citizenship verification of its registered voters. Judicial Watch has
been involved in several of the cases and years ago filed documents with
the EAC in support of efforts by Arizona, Kansas and Georgia to require
voter registration applicants to provide proof of citizenship. In its
filing with the EAC Judicial Watch writes that under Section 8 of the
National Voter Registration ACT (NVRA), states are under a federal
obligation to assure that non-citizens neither register nor vote. A
failure to allow states to require such information would undermine
Americans’ confidence that their elections are being conducted fairly
and honestly, and would thwart states’ ability to comply with the
election integrity obligations imposed by federal law.
. . .
In the last few weeks, however, the EAC has quietly reversed itself by
approving the petition of three states—Kansas, Georgia and Alabama—to
add a citizenship requirement to their voter registration forms. The
letters, signed by the EAC’s new executive director, Brian D. Newby,
were issued on January 29, 2016. They can be viewed here. The about-face
opens the door for other states seeking to preserve the integrity of
elections by requiring evidence of voter eligibility before ballots are
cast.
. . .http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-election-comm-quietly-lets-states-verify-u-s-citizenship/

It appears that the recent execution-style murder of a Massachusetts man
was committed by two Central American teens that came to the U.S. as
Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) under President Obama’s open border
free-for-all. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors—mostly from
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—have entered the country through the
Mexican border since the influx began in the summer of 2014 and the
administration has relocated them nationwide.

News reports indicate that the 17-year-olds charged in the gruesome
Massachusetts killing entered the U.S. recently as UAC’s and both have
ties to MS-13, according to authorities cited by various outlets. They
lived in Everett and one of the teens, Cristian Nunez-Flores, moved to
Massachusetts from his native El Salvador a year and a half ago which is
when the influx of Central American minors began. His parents remain in
El Salvador, according to a local news article. The other gangbanger’s
name is Jose Vasquez Ardon and he too is a recent arrival from Central
America. Prosecutors say the teens, described in a local news article as
“baby-faced boys,” shot a 19-year-old in the head. Both are being held
without bail for obvious reasons.
. . .http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/unaccompanied-alien-children-charged-in-execution-style-murder-media-calls-them-baby-faced-boys/

Remember this moment from 2009 when President Obama was trying to
reassure Americans that Obamacare would not benefit illegal immigrants?

"There are also those that claim our reform efforts would insure illegal
immigrants. This too, is false. The reforms I am proposing do not apply
to those who are here illegally," Obama said. "You lie!" South Carolina
Congressman Joe Wilson shouted out.

22.America’s Balkan Values
White liberals and black careerists vigorously reject the MLK ideal of a color-blind society.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, February 9, 2016
. . .
So who is deserving of special set-asides? Take the case of
multimillionaire Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who fled Mexico’s
censorship and came to America to establish a lucrative career under the
singular protection of the U.S. Constitution as a self-appointed
advocate against supposed American nativism. Has America been so unkind
to Ramos that his children will have to have special help getting into
college, while the progeny of an out-of-work coal miner in West Virginia
or an Armenian farmer in Chico cannot qualify?
. . .http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431014/race-privilege-america

23.A Day in the Life of Central Americans Crossing Mexico
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
American Thinker, February 12, 2016
. . .
First, many families need to send their young men to the U.S. to send
back money. El Salvador receives about $4 billion in remittances or
"remesas." It's probably the strongest safety net in the country. My
guess is that other countries have similar numbers.

Second, the Obama administration refuses to speak clearly and defend
U.S. sovereignty. Also, we indirectly invite people to come north when
we offer legalization to anyone who crosses over.

The attitude in Central America is simple: get to the U.S., and you are likely to stay.

On one hand, we appreciate a young man who wants to cut our grass and
support his mom back home. At the same time, we shouldn't encourage
people to come with vague enforcement language.

24.Rubio's Immigration Plan Will Only Cause Suffering for Americans
By Mark Thies
Overpasses for America, February 8, 2016
. . .
Equally compelling data are stagnant STEM wages, with increases
averaging a tiny 0.4 percent per year from 2000-2012
(cis.org/no-stem-shortage). In 2013, PBS ran a story called “The Bogus
High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower US Wages”. And last
week in his blog, Professor Norm Matloff at University of
California-Davis pointed out that computer science starting salaries
went up a microscopic 0.06 percent last year.

H1-B-visa

But if Rubio has his way, prospects for our STEM students will be
getting substantially worse. That’s because of a bill he is
co-sponsoring in the Senate: S. 153, the Immigration and Innovation
(I-Squared) Act. If passed, S. 153 would be a game changer — a bill that
should scare the heck out of parents paying for a STEM education for
their kids. Let’s look at how I-Squared will make it even harder for
Americans to get good-paying jobs.

Work visas called H-1B visas are granted to foreign workers who have a
bachelor’s or higher degree in a wide range of areas. S. 153 would
increase the number of H-1B visas from 65,000 up to 245,000. Contrary to
popular belief, there are no worker protections to prevent companies
from firing American workers, replacing them with H-1B’s, and even
forcing them to train their replacements (e.g., Disney).

25.Hispanic Television's Most Influential Racialist
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMag.com, February 8, 2016

The National Council of La Raza (Spanish for “The Race”) once honored
Ramos with its “Ruben Salazar” award for his positive portrayal of
Latinos. It is fitting indeed that Ramos should have been singled out
for praise by an organization obsessed with promoting open borders,
lawlessness, racial and ethnic division, and perpetual anger against a
nation that is supposedly racist to its core. Those are precisely Jorge
Ramos's obsessions as well.
. . .http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261726/hispanic-televisions-most-influential-racialist-john-perazzo

26.Liberal Race-Baiters Embarrassed on Univision's Al Punto
By Jorge Bonilla
Newsbusters.org, February 9, 2016
. . .
The panel featured Democrat Freddy Balsera, and Republicans Adolfo
Franco and Otto Reich. When you factor Ramos, this adds up to an even
panel.

Balsera dutifully took Ramos' first softball and dished out a steaming
pile of racial vitiation against Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, charging both
with being "anti-Hispanic" and "anti-immigrant". The evidence offered
to support that claim is that they both built a base of support beyond
the community (unlike, say, Luis Gutiérrez - whose district consists of
the Puerto Rican neighborhood, the Mexican neighborhood, and the stretch
of interstate that connects the two), the claim that they don't grant
interviews to the network (false), and the charge that Cruz doesn't
speak Spanish (which didn't stop the network from anointing Julián
Castro).

27.On Immigration, Time for the West to be Realistic
By Michael Curtis
American Thinker, February 9, 2016
. . .
Some of these parties are virulent in their opposition to immigration
and their fear of the challenge to Western values. Nevertheless, two
factors are relevant. It is not racist to suggest that, for practical
reasons, reasonable limits be put on those attempting to immigrate.
Considering the millions desiring to leave not only from the Middle
East, but also from Africa, Europe faces the possibility of an enormous
increase in scale and an uncontrollable pressure. That pressure becomes
even more potent since the native population of Europe is aging and
declining.

28.After Hiring 1,000 New DMV Bureaucrats, California Issues 605,000 Licenses to Illegals
By Monica Showalter
Investor's Business Daily, February 10, 2016
. . .
Apparently the biggest reason they didn’t issue all of them this year is
that so many illegals lacked basic literacy skills in any language,
according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

The Daily News reported that the spike in driver’s license applications
didn’t lead to a rise in vehicle registrations or insurance purchasing,
either, as might be expected given the rationale that Gov. Jerry Brown
gave for opening the door to illegals’ driver’s licenses when he signed
AB60 last year.

What the law does do is open the door for vast new benefits for
illegals, something they have not hesitated to take advantage of, given
the failure of the Obama administration to show any will to enforce U.S.
law. A large number have received $750 million in illegal health care
subsidies under ObamaCare, despite the president’s hard-argued selling
point to the public that “those individuals” would not qualify.

29.WSJ: Arizona’s Pro-American Immigration Reform Boosts Wages, Productivity, Housing
By Neil Munro
Breitbart.com, February 10, 2016
. . .
All those economic, social and technological benefits emerged from only a
40 percent drop in illegal population caused by the state’s modest
reforms, and despite President Barack Obama’s refusal to seriously
enforce popular federal laws intended to bar illegal migration. Also,
there was no recorded drop in the annual inflow of legal immigrants. The
state reforms only “barred [illegals] from receiving government
benefits, including nonemergency hospital care … drivers’ licenses and …
in-state tuition rates.”

30.Dear Mexico: You Might Wind Up Paying For That Wall After All
By Jazz Shaw
HotAir.com, February 10, 2016

Over the weekend the former president of Mexico took a rather scoffing
tone when he said that Mexico wasn’t going to pay one cent for Donald
Trump’s “stupid wall.” This is a knock we’ve heard from plenty of The
Donald’s critics back here at home as well, coming from Democrats and
Republicans alike. I mean… it’s crazy, right? How could anyone expect
that to happen?

There’s an article this week over at The Last Refuge which might be
worth a look if you’ve got an open mind on the subject. One of the less
commented on aspects of international relations with Mexico is the
volume of cash which Mexicans living in America (including illegal
aliens) send home every year to their families. There’s nothing shocking
about the idea at first glance. People send money home all the time.
But just how much is it?
. . .
Is it possible? Absolutely, assuming you can mount the pressure required
to make it happen. It would be complicated and politically messy, but
such things don’t seem to bother Trump much to begin with. It all comes
down to the idea of directing law enforcement to direct resources and
vigorous attention to impound all remittance payments derived from
illegal wages. And once the word is out on the street that such payments
are being looked at closely, both through electronic transactions and
the purchase of money orders from banks and post offices, the flow might
not be stopped but it would be severely reduced.
. . .http://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/10/dear-mexico-you-might-wind-up-paying-for-that-wall-after-all/

32.New Jersey Man Slays Child
By Ann Coulter
Human Events Online, February 10, 2016
. . .
Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was agog at the fact that IN
THIS COUNTRY, 66 PERCENT OF GOP VOTERS ARE COMFORTABLE WITH BANNING
MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS.

Her neurotic repetition of the popularity of Trump’s Muslim ban should
be considered an in-kind donation to his campaign. Most people heard it,
and thought: “Is that true? Then I’m definitely switching to Trump.”

Even Muslim immigrants were saying, “I probably won’t commit jihad
myself, but I know some of the Muslims coming definitely will.”

It’s like importing immigrants with Ebola. We feel bad for them, we know
it’s not their fault, but we just can’t let them in. For every 100,000
Muslims we admit, we know that at least a few hundred either plan to
engage in terrorism right away or can be persuaded to engage in
terrorism later. Another 10,000 will send them money or help them hide.

Trump could probably help himself by saying: “Fine. You don’t want a
temporary ban on Muslim immigrants? How about we temporarily suspend all
immigration?” Let’s take a breather while we watch what happens to
Europe.

34.Enforcing Immigration laws Puts Georgia on Right Side of History and Popular Opinion
By D.A. King
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 7, 2016
. . .
It is amusing to see the leftist advocates invoke the very dubious
conclusions of the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute’s
latest “report” on immigration and the alleged monetary boost to the
Georgia economy. That is if we would only ignore several federal and
state laws and put illegal aliens in line with American citizens and
legal immigrants in our university admittance offices. And also put them
into our workforce to compete with American workers and their already
stagnant wages.

After that, in the never-ending game of political incrementalism, the
next oft-quoted report would no-doubt carefully explain the
mega-benefits to the Georgia economy if only we had officially open
borders and a constant, unregulated influx of immigrants to replace the
workers already struggling to live the American Dream in their own
country.

All concerned should pay attention to the legislative process under the
Gold Dome on the pending Senate Bill 6. It addresses existing state law
to clear up intentionally created confusion on just who is an illegal
alien after President Obama’s dubious executive action on deferred
action on deportation.

The Impact of US Immigration on Democratic and Republican Election Outcomes

By Giovanni Peri, Anna Maria Mayda, and Walter Steingress

VoxEU.org, February 2, 2016
. . .
An important aspect of the political effect of migration, which has
received less attention in the US debate, is that natives' votes too can
be affected by the increase in the share of immigrants, through the
indirect channel described above. When we distinguish between the effect
of naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants, our empirical analysis
shows that this is indeed the case. The impact of immigration on
Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalised
migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it is positive when
the share of non-citizen migrants increases above a threshold.2 Our
results are consistent with naturalised migrants being less likely to
vote for the Republican Party than native voters, and with native
voters' political preferences moving in favour of the Republican Party
but only at high levels of non-citizen immigrant shares. This second
effect is significant only for quite high shares of (non-citizen)
immigrants (above 0.132). According to CPS data as of 2012, only in six
US states (California, District of Columbia, Nevada, New Jersey, New
York and Texas) was this share sufficiently high to push natives towards
the Republican Party. For the other states, the share of
non-naturalised immigrants in the population was less than 13.2% in 2012
(and it still is) and the corresponding impact on Republican votes of
non-citizen immigrants was null to negative.
. . .http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-immigration-s-electoral-impact-new-evidence

The GOP's Suicidal Immigration Stance

By Jacob Sullum

Townhall.com, February 3, 2016
. . .
On the face of it, the Republican Party is not in a very pro-immigrant
mood. Yet the positions staked out by Cruz and Trump are unpopular even
among Republicans and could prove fatal to a party that needs support
from Hispanic voters to win.

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump remains
the front-runner nationally, polling at or above 30 percent, and
hostility to immigration is the most prominent theme of his campaign.
The billionaire reality TV star, who has disparaged Mexican immigrants
as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers, promises to end birthright
citizenship, triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers, "humanely" deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants, and
build a wall on our southern border at the Mexican government's expense.

Reader comment: Opposing illegal immigration and importation of foreign
"refugees is NOT suicidal !!! In fact, the opposite is what is suicidal.
Trump and other GOP candidates are more in touch with the actual
sentiments of the CITIZENS of USA who clearly want closed borders, and
enforcement of immigration laws already on the books !!! Even legal
Hispanic immigrants want an end to Illegals coming into this country and
undercutting them and taking their jobs !!!! And black Americans,
likewise resent jobs that they could have, being farmed out to illegals
!!!

This Is The Jeff Sessions Election and the GOP is Just Along for the Ride

By Lauren Fox

Talking Points Memo, February 1, 2016
. . .
"Ted Cruz was with me, Steve King, Mike Lee and others who were opposed
to this bill. Don't let anyone tell you differently," Sessions said,
according to a report from al.com.

The truth of the matter is that if Sessions were to endorse Trump over
Cruz or Cruz over Trump, it might actually have an impact on the
first-in-the-nation presidential contest. Earlier this week a key
Sessions aide, Stephen Miller, left the senator's office to join the
Trump campaign.

For now, however, Sessions says, he's just there to be helpful. He's not endorsing anyone.

"I don't know if I will ever endorse anybody, but I do believe that a
candidate who can effectively understand and articulate the American
people's concerns on immigration and on trade can win this election,"
Sessions said. "Everybody is for the economy, everybody is for GDP,
everybody is for more education, everybody is for more highways. How do
you distinguish yourself?"